Several years ago our friend and colleague Bill Baker commented that organizations have been training the wrong people. Instead of spending time and energy developing more skilled facilitators, he said, they should develop group members’ skills as the way to improve practice and success. Our experience bears out the wisdom of this approach. When group members are knowledgeable and skilled, anyone with simple knowledge of facilitation principles and moves can facilitate constructive group work. Drawing from the Cognitive Coaching model (Costa & Garmston, 2002), the work of Peter Senge (1990), and the work of Beker, Costa & Shalit (1997), we adapted and refined this set of norms of collaboration as the tools for productive communication between group members. These are as follows:
Pausing.
Paraphrasing.
Putting inquiry at the center.
Probing for specificity.
Placing ideas on the table.
Paying attention to self and others.
Presuming positive intentions.
Reflect on your typical behavior in some group with which you regularly work. Before reading the description of the norms of collaboration below, do the following self-assessment. In the list above put a check mark after the norms to which you pay conscious attention in most meetings with group you have in mind.
The Seven Norms of Collaboration
Several years ago our friend and colleague Bill Baker commented that organizations have been training the wrong people. Instead of spending time and energy developing more skilled facilitators, he said, they should develop group members’ skills as the way to improve practice and success. Our experience bears out the wisdom of this approach. When group members are knowledgeable and skilled, anyone with simple knowledge of facilitation principles and moves can facilitate constructive group work.
Drawing from the Cognitive Coaching model (Costa & Garmston, 2002), the work of Peter Senge (1990), and the work of Beker, Costa & Shalit (1997), we adapted and refined this set of norms of collaboration as the tools for productive communication between group members. These are as follows:
Reflect on your typical behavior in some group with which you regularly work. Before reading the description of the norms of collaboration below, do the following self-assessment. In the list above put a check mark after the norms to which you pay conscious attention in most meetings with group you have in mind.